Almost Half of Russians Say It’s Likely Prigozhin is Still Alive, New Poll Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – A year after it was widely reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a revolt against Moscow officials over their handling of the war in Ukraine, had died in a plane crash, one possibly organized by Vladimir Putin, almost half of Russians say that it is possible that he is still alive but in hiding, either in Russia itself or in Africa.

            According to a poll conducted by the New Image Marketing Group, seven percent of Russians say that it is certain Prigozhin is alive, 40 percent more say that it is possible that this is the case, 37 percent say it is certain that he is dead, and 18 percent say it is difficult for them to give an answer (dsnews.ua/world/prigozhin-zhiv-47-rosiyan-vvazhayut-shcho-yogo-ne-vbilo-23082024-506818).

            Not surprisingly, observers are offering a variety of explanations for this phenomenon. Igor Eidman, a Russian commentator now based in Berlin, says that such attitudes are the product of efforts by the Kremlin to ensure that Russians don’t think Putin killed him. After all, “if Prigozhen is alive, this means that Putin didn’t do that” (t.me/igoreidman/1691 reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2024/8/25/608119/).

            But Aleksandra Arkhipova, an independent Russian anthropologist, argues that the belief that Prigozhin is still alive is part of a long tradition in Russian history in which the population refuses to believe that a leader they believed in has in fact died (https://t.me/anthro_fun/3071 https://echofm.online/opinions/prigozhin-zhivo-utopicheskaya-legenda-vyzhila).

            In the 20^th century alone, many Russians believed the tsar or his childrenhad not been killed by the Bolsheviks but were hiding out somewhere. They also believed that Lenin had remained alive; and some had the same views about Fanya Kaplan, who attempted to assassinate Lenin, and even Raul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved Jews during World War II.

            Arkhipova discusses this tradition in detail, one that the Prigozhin case is clearly the latest example of regardless of whether the Kremlin has tried to exploit it in a 30-page paper available online at anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/012online/12_online_arkhipova.pdf